After Being “Betrayed a Lot” Angelina Jolie Shares Her Perspective on Relationships

Angelina Jolie while revealing that she doesn't have too many close friends, the Maleficent star reflected on why she prefers to keep it that way. 

"I don't really have those kinds of relationships," Angelina told The Hollywood Reporter in an interview published Aug. 30. "Maybe it's losing your parent young. Maybe it's working. Maybe it's being somebody who's been betrayed a lot. I don't have a lot of those warm, close relationships as much that I lean on." 

The 49-year-old—whose mom Marcheline Bertrand died when Angelina was 31—noted, "My mother was very close to me. I lost her." 

But has some confidants, including Cambodian-American human rights activist Loung Ung. As the Oscar winner put it, "a few is enough."

"I've had a few friends over the years not be there for my family in their hour of need," she explained, but "I have a couple of people that I trust."

Instead, Angelina—who shares Maddox, 22, Pax, 20, Zahara, 19, Shiloh, 18, and twins Vivienne and Knox, 16, with ex Brad Pitt—prefers to spend time with her family.  

In fact, the Eternals actress even hired Vivienne as her volunteer assistant while she was producing the Broadway musical adaptation of The Outsiders this year. (Her daughter opted to drop "Pitt" from her name in the playbill, a move her sister Shiloh recently made permanent.) So, it's no surprise that most of her days are spent with her kids. 

"I don't really have…a social life," Angelina told WSJ. Magazine in December. "They are the closest people to me and my life, and they're my close friends. We're seven very different people, which is our strength."

And it's because, for the Lara Croft star—whose dad is actor Jon Voight— having her children around brought a necessary light to her life. 

"I was 26 when I became a mother," she recalled to Vogue last September. "My entire life changed. Having children saved me—and taught me to be in this world differently. I think, recently, I would've gone under in a much darker way had I not wanted to live for them." 

"They're better than me, because you want your children to be," she continued. "Of course I'm the mother, and hopefully that safe place for them and that stability. But I'm also the one that they laugh at—and I see them taking over so many different aspects of our family."